Imagine if every PhD dissertation resulted in something that changed the world. That’s what happened when Roy Fielding presented his doctoral dissertation on the “representational state transfer” at University of California-Irvine in 2000.

This dissertation laid the groundwork for the staggering growth of RESTful web services, which have reshaped how organizations deploy and utilize APIs. In fact, today 70% of public APIs depend on REST services.

In our newest infographic, we take a look at the language, properties, and requirements of a RESTful web service. We look at how REST compares to its well-known counterpart Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), and provide tips for how to choose between the two.